Free Grunts by John C. McManus Page B

the men were nearby and heard the statements made by their company officers,” Irby wrote. “It was apparent that their morale had been greatly affected.” The attack went nowhere. In the recollection of one Marine officer, the soldiers “moved forward along the ridge a few yards until they encountered the first enemy positions, then gave it all up as a bad idea.” Marines from I Company, 7th Marines, ended up taking the knoll, but it cost them sixteen casualties, including the death of their company commander. Understandably, they were deeply angry over the incident, and the story spread quickly among the proud Marines, especially because the 7th was nearing total exhaustion after fighting for so long on the ridges. The problems with K Company seemed to confirm the opinion of so many Marines that the Army just could not fight like the Corps. When word of it reached General Rupertus, he smugly blurted: “There’s the Wildcat Division of pussycats. Now I can tell Geiger ‘I told you so. That’s why I didn’t want the Army involved in this in the first place.’ ” As if the situation would have been better without the presence of fresh reinforcements! Needless to say, Rupertus’s statement revealed much about his pettiness and his myopic view of the battle. There is no record of him ever repeating his “I told you so” tirade to Geiger.
    Marine frustration with K Company, 321st, was understandable, but blown out of proportion. The vast majority of the soldiers were fighting hard, doing their best, bleeding and dying alongside their Marine countrymen. As September turned to October, and the battle evolved into little more than a brutal struggle for each and every knobby ridge and fortified cave of the Umurbrogol, a distinct respect grew between the soldiers and Marines who were doing the real fighting, risking their lives in the daily crapshoot of combat.
    By now, the 5th Marines had taken Ngesebus, a nearby island, and had secured the northern part of Peleliu. Battered though they were, they relieved the decimated 7th Marines and went into the line with the 321st at the Umurbrogol. All that remained in Japanese hands was the isolated inner ring of the Umurbrogol, a nine-hundred-yard-long, four-hundred-yard-wide pocket of ridges and caves. “We had everything . . . that was ever used by anybody,” General Smith later said. “We had the beaches, we had the airfield, we were using everything that we ever wanted to use. All we didn’t have was this darned pocket.” With the airfield and the beaches secure from Japanese fire, and some of the high ground in American hands, there probably was not much point in trying to take the rest of the pocket. Better to let the isolated Japanese starve or die of thirst in their caves. But in World War II, American commanders generally liked to destroy all enemy pockets of resistance, especially in the Pacific, where the Japanese normally fought to the death rather than surrender. Wise or not—and it probably was not all that smart—this was the mind-set. 30
    So the bitter struggle for this strategically worthless coral mush continued, just as Colonel Nakagawa had foreseen. Day after day, groups of ragged American infantrymen attacked. To them, every jagged ridge and every looming cave looked alike, but they had nonetheless coined nicknames for some of the more prominent terrain features—the China Wall, the Five Sisters, the Five Brothers, Old Baldy, Hill 140, the Wildcat Bowl, and, of course, Walt Ridge. The 321st initiated an extensive sandbag-filling operation for their frontline soldiers. Carrying parties hauled the bags up to the Umurbrogol and plopped them down in rifle company areas on the front lines. Infantry soldiers then attacked by crawling forward, pushing the bags in front of themselves, affording some level of cover from the withering enemy fire.
    The Americans also had plenty of fire support. Artillery constantly pounded the pocket. Sometimes bulldozers